Agra is only about 140 km from Gwalior where I grew up. Although I visited the place atleast twice later, yet my first visit took place when I was in my teens and had just about entered college. The college cricket team was visiting Agra in December 1953 for a few matches to be played with teams of various colleges there.

Those days the colleges at Gwalior were affiliated to Agra University. The University had its jurisdiction spread far and wide - from Western UP to Rajasthan, Mahakoshal to the then newly created Madhya Bharat comprising parts of Bundelkhand and Malwa.

In
Focus

I wasn't
good at cricket but, probably, for want of a better player I was made
a part of the team. That made it necessary for me to have a few white
shirts. Normally, we would have shirts stitched by a known tailor.
Short of time, my elder brother and I went shopping for shirts. We
bought three shirts and would you believe that I got shirts costing
Rs. 4 to 5 from the outlet of Samson Dresses - a brand that was
commonly found during those days? Incredibly cheap, isn't it?

But
then a dollar was equivalent to Re 1/- in 1947. It could not have
been more than Rs 2 in 1953. It was the external borrowings that
brought down the rupee value later. That is, of course, another
story.

We travelled by
III class (III class coaches were still running overflowing with
passengers, probably indicating the prevailing level of poverty) in a
slow passenger train that took the whole of the long winter night to
cover 140-odd kilometres. It suited us as we slept through the night
as best as we could. At Agra, we were put up in the union room of the
St. John's College. It was vacation time during Christmas and the
whole place was deserted.

Three of us -
Ramesh Tiwari (currently in Winnipeg enjoying retirement from his
academic life in the University of Manitoba), Pratap Desai (retired
from the National Health Service of UK and now living close to
London) and I (retired and settled down at Bhopal) cornered a table
tennis table lying in one corner and spread our bedrolls on it. It
indeed was a tight squeeze but with the Agra cold of December we
managed to stay on the table all those nights.

Next morning the
match against St John's College was a wash out for us. Our team was
bowled out for a measly 42 runs in the first innings. In the second
innings they sent me out to open. St. John's had a stockily built
speedster with chubby cheeks by the name Shivaji Sharma. As he ran
into bowl, I could see his fleshy cheeks bouncing up and down. He was
pretty fast and many of his balls whizzed past.

I could connect
with only a few of them and my bat would get a violent thwack
whenever it did so. I didn't survive long, managing an unintended
brace before my woodwork got rattled by what seemed like a supersonic
delivery. Never used to such speed of that shiny red cherry, I was
lucky that my bones were intact. Those days there was hardly any
protective gear apart from the gloves, pads for legs and an abdomen
guard. The jute matting that used to be laid on the inadequately
prepared pitches would add to the pace of the ball.

Walking back I
was reminded of the Indian cricket team's tour of England a year
earlier in the summer of 1952 in which Freddie Truman, popularly
known as "Fiery Freddy", was introduced into the England team. If
I recall it was Rex Alston, the BBC commentator who graphically
described Pankaj Roy, the Indian opener, retreating towards the
square-leg umpire as Truman commenced his run-up. Such was the fury
of his bowling.

Having gone
through somewhat similar circumstances I thought Roy couldn't have
done any better. No wonder, later, at Headingley, Leeds, India went
four down for no score on the board. I wondered if Shivaji Sharma was
so nippy what Freddie Truman was like. Though we fared better in the
second innings with some good scores coming off a few bats, yet we
lost the match by an innings and a few runs.

Agra is known
for its famous monuments yet we didn't visit any of them. Our days
would be spent on the cricket grounds and evenings in cinema halls.
Our friend Desai was a great movie buff. We saw as many as four, two
of them were fresh releases, Tarana and Sangdil, both starring
Madhubala and Dilip Kumar - a great pair, Madhubala looking
unbelievably beautiful making a great impression on our young minds.

From our daily
allowance of Rs. 3/- per day we used to spend a rupee and a quarter
on movies. The allowance may appear ridiculously meagre today but in
those early 1950 days things were cheap - unbelievably cheap.

The
Late Nawab of Pataudi once happened to mention while commentating in
a cricket test match that during his playing days in late 1950s and
early 1960s, even test cricketers used to get only Rs. 25 per day –
surely, a pittance for a nawab.

Food, for
example, was very cheap. Breakfast in a restaurant near St. John's
College would cost us six annas (less than half a rupee) for an
omelette of two eggs and two toasted slices with butter on them.
Lunch would be around twelve Anna's and for dinner our skipper, Madhu
Hukku, discovered a joint, a sort of dhaba near Raja ki Mandi railway
station.

The man who ran it appeared to be particular about
cleanliness as his place was spic and span. He would make us sit on a
clean mat in front of his wood-fired choolha
and pass on to us freshly baked chapattis costing one anna each. The
delectable vegetables, daal
and pickles were free. A quarter of a rupee would fetch us a very
satisfying vegetarian meal. I always had a liking for UP cuisine
having had it with neighbours. This was as good if not better.

Though I gave a
miss to the monuments most of which today are World Heritage Sites I
recall, however, having gone to the Agra Cant. It was a big
cantonment, seemed to be much bigger than what we had at Gwalior. No
wonder, the expansive Agra Cant. Railway Station was and continues to
be the main railway station for the city.

I remember to have found
the Cantonment area very clean - in contrast to the inner city
which we used to frequent. One of the markets was well laid out on
one side along a broad road with an extensive open space on the other
side. The imprint of the Army was evident with neat road markings in
black and white with proper signage all over

If I remember we
played three matches, lost two and drew one. We returned from an
unsuccessful trip but gained much in experience. We came back
without even having a look at the Taj Mahal- at least I didn't
see it until much later in 1993 with my wife when we saw most of
them.

I was disappointed to see the Cantonment area. It had become
much more crowded and gone were the imprints of the Army from various
roads. Perhaps our Army also cannot deal with the rampant
disorderliness of the exponentially rising civilian population. In
any case, Agra like many other UP towns was filthy and, in all
probability, continues to be so.

In 1993 I
thought I saw far too many skull caps all over – a veritable sea of
white. It certainly wasn't because of the rise in the city's
population. The cap was perhaps the way the aggrieved community
wished to display its identity and exhibit its solidarity after the
meaningless demolition of the historical Babri Masjid.